Monday

My z fold 4 has been playing up for weeks. Since upgrading to the latest version of android, wifi hasn’t worked, on Monday it stopped charging and is pretty much now a brick, just when I need a phone as contract conversations heat up. I dug out my old oneplus 6t, a 6 year old phone and it worked well, and is noticeably quicker than the Samsung with all its bloatware. I’ve now ordered a oneplus open as a replacement. I should have trusted my better judgement and not got a Samsung in the first place.

The rest of the day was mainly indoors working on SDinGov talk, the weather this week has been atrocious.

To add to the connectivity anxiety, our hamster chewed through my macbook charger cable from her little ball thing.

Tuesday

Went to town to get a new macbook charger and some stationary. I was walking to Rymans, when an ebike collided with an old man in front of me. Myself and a few others rushed over to see if we could help. The gentleman was laid on the floor, he looked confused and there was an obvious bump on the back of his head, so I asked the kid on the ebike (who to his credit had stopped) to use his phone and called an ambulance.

With it not being my phone I quickly started to struggle to answer the call handlers questions on which street we were one, there were no street signs. One of the people who came to help told me we were on Cornwall street, so I told the call handler we were outside Sports Direct on Cornwall street, she couldn’t find a Sports Direct on that street. We eventually figured it out between us and she instructed me that a triage clinician would call back and assess whether an ambulance was needed.

Whilst we waited the gentleman recovered to a better state than he was initially, got up and sat down on a bench. He had an obvious swelling on his head, and he said he had bruised his thigh, but he wasn’t sure he needed an ambulance. The security guards from Sports Direct tried to see if there were any clinicians in the town centre, but there wasn’t. After about 20 minutes with no call back it was increasingly obvious that the man probably wasn’t concussed, but I wasn’t confident enough to be able to feel comfortable that he should drive home, so I offered to give him a lift. We were parked in the same car park so it made sense, he eventually agreed and we wandered back to the car park.

His daughter phoned back we were in the car park, she was an ex-nurse so we had a chat about what had happened and I explained my concern about concussion, she agreed and said she would be over later to check up on him once he was home, whilst we were on the phone the 999 clinicians phoned back, because they couldn’t get through they despatched an ambulance to our last reported location, so we quickly phoned back to get the ambulance cancelled.

We drove back to his location, on the journey back he was very chatty and told me about his career and his marriage, his wife had had dementia and had recently passed away, he was navigating life without her. Once we were back I stayed for a cup of tea and made sure he was settled in and not showing any signs of deteriorating. We talked about bowls and phoned his daughter to let her know he was home ok, then I left. He has been on my mind all week so it was nice to get a voicemail on Friday to let me know he was ok, I will phone him back today.

Wednesday

Priyanca and I had a catchup about our SDinGov talk, it’s coming along but still lots to do. I usually find my presentation process is to get down everything I want to talk about and then edit it down. It’s not very efficient, I need to find a better process.

Caught up about the next contract, things were rapidly solidifying, the quality of communication has been great.

Thursday

Unexpected commute to Swindon to pick up a sports wheelchair for Phoebe, the weather was awful, we queued at Haldon Hill for an hour, it took 7.5 hours but it was nice to spend time with just Phoebe on our mini road-trip. The young lad whose chair we bought is hoping to compete at the LA Olympics, we’ll be keeping an eye out for him. Stopped off at Chipping Sodbury on the way home and showed her where I grew up.

Friday

Contract signed! I’ll be working with public digital as an engagement manager, a slightly new role for me with a private sector client. I’m still reading all of the guidance so I won’t say more than that until I’m a bit more settled. I’m very excited, there are a lot of people I admire at PD and I’m really looking forward to the engagement. In the afternoon we had a brief catchup with some of the team, everyone was lovely.

Phoebe and I tested the new sports chair at the local tennis courts, got a flat tyre, easily fixable though. Had a very brief catchup with Oli at blog club. We chatted about Wardley mapping and both agreed the value of it is doing it with people to have a shared consensus, not in isolation. I arrived late as the afternoon team catchup overan slightly, and I left early as Freya came home from her singing summer camp and I wanted to hear how it went.

In the evening we watched the Olympics opening ceremony, I really enjoyed it on the whole. I liked that it wasn’t in the stadium and was (hopefully) more accessible to Parisiens as a result. The boats were fun, the menage-a-trois, the blue smurf, the aquatic silver robot horse, and CELINE DION. It was different, it was very French, I loved it. To top it off the Olympic cauldron is where I asked Han to marry me way back in 2007.

Reading

Finally finished Rubicon, enjoyed it, learnt a bunch of stuff, I never knew Cleopatra was Greek!

Started Eyes on the street, the life of Jane Jacobs by Robert Kanigel after James Plunkett recommended it on Bluesky.

Haven’t read many websites or posts this week, with all the phone shenanigans.